Strategic Management: Formulation and Implementation

Ryszard Barnat,
LLM., DBA, PhD (Strat. Mgmt)

Strategy Implementation: Operationalizing The Strategy

After objectives are established, corporate-level and business unit strategies are selected, several activities must take place to ensure that the strategy is successful. The first concern in the implementation of strategy is to operationalize that strategy throughout the organization. The strategist has a number of tools to accomplish this: annual objectives, functional strategies, policies, resources allocation, and actio plans.

Annual objectives guide implementation by translating long-term objectives into current targets. Strategy is further defined by determining how it will work or is working on the functional areas. Next, the financial resources of the business must be allocated to make certain that each organizational unit is adequately supported.

Policies guide and constrain decision makers and should ensure that the various functional strategies are integrated and complementary. Action plans relate to an examination of what tasks must be carried out, how and when, if competitive and corporate strategies are to be implemented successfully and objectives achieved.

These tools should be utilized in a manner that is both comprehensive and consistent. Comprehensive implementation refers to the range of techniques employed. Failure to implement comprehensively is wasteful because all techniques are not used. Consistent implementation minimizes conflicting signal when several techniques are being used.

However, before a strategy can be implemented it must be clearly understand. It allows managers to link whatever task is at hand to the overall organization direction. Therefore, the purpose of this chapter is to discuss each of these tools in more depth and describe their importance in the successful implementation of strategy.